A borehole in Antarctica produces evidence of sudden warming

… and here I was told the recent Arctic melting was “unprecedented”. My, my but we have a plethora of “unprecedented” events coming to light in the Earth’s history these days. These events happen so frequently, they almost seem normal in the evolution of the planet. Oh wait, maybe temp fluctuations are normal. Who’da thunk it …

Wow, that happened 11-16 million years ago.
Further proof that it was a man made event from burning hydrocarbons….
Electric cars will fix it.
Oh wait, we in the US mostly burn hydrocarbons to generate electricity. And they want hydro-electric plants removed. No nuclear. And the transmission of electricity from distant sources of generation loose significant portions that that electricity which is generated in step-up, step-down, transmission lines, etc, before you can even charge that (non-hybrid) electric car….
Dang, this is really really confusing.

Antarctica warmed up and the icesheets half-melted about 27 million years ago. This warmer period lasted until about 14 million years ago when Antarctica reglaciated and ice-sheets started forming on Greenland as well.
There were several warm(er) spikes in the period, so these researchers just found one of them. There is temp data with resolution as low as 1,000 years (average about 10,000) covering this period.

“The Antarctic ice sheet was formed about 35 million years ago”…
I’m puzzled. I didn’t think the Antarctic cores went back nearly that far. Here I am looking at a graph from Vostok that goes back 450,000 years… Epica goes back 800,000 years (I thought that was considered to be a great extension).
WUWT??

Fighting climate change is a battle no one can win. It’s sort of like Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the country other countries go to die.

I have been reading this and other climate related blogs for a while now. I have come to one inescapable conclusion.
There are no true climate sceptics!

All those dinosaurs driving SUVs. They were way more advanced that we thought….

Lucy, those are sediment cores not ice cores.

With dust-sized palynomorphs, how do they distinguish between local production and wind-borne deposition? After all, it is found in just one “anomalous” core .

I can’t wait to read stories about how sea life is exploding because of plankton, seaweed, and other life forms eating the elevated CO2. What a great planet we live on.

“An understanding of this event, in the context of timing and magnitude of the change, has important implications for how the climate system operates and what the potential future response in a warmer global climate might be,” said Harwood.”
Harwood goes from saying “has important implications for how the climate system operates” which is good, then goes on to say “and what the potential future response in a warmer global climate might be”
Makes me think he is buttering both sides of his bread.

Interesting that they seem to accept that a poleward shift of the jets accompanies natural warming forcings and clearly in that case the jets were forced poleward to an extreme degree of many hundreds of miles.
However they seem to think that the movement of the jets led to the movement of warmer oceanic water towards the south pole whereas I would argue that a faster energy release from the oceans came first then the jets moved and then the Antarctic edge areas became warmer.
Either way it is clear that very substantial latitudinal air circulation shifts can occur wholly as a result of natural forcing which leaves the climate models out on a limb because currently they posit that the jet stream poleward movement from 1975 to 2000 was wholly or primarily anthropogenically caused. They do not yet seem to have adjusted their models to take account of the shift back equatorward since 2000. To do that they would have to reduce or eliminate the assumed effect of increased CO2 in the air. To do that would imply an acceptance that the observations of Tyndall and others in relation to CO2 in the air do not necessarily translate into a significant climate or global energy budget effect so they are in a bit of a bind.
Elsewhere I have suggested why the Arctic and Antarctic would be affected differently under global warming or cooling regimes because one is an ocean surrounded by continents and the other is a continent surrounded by oceans.
Thus during a period of global warming of the air from increased energy release by the oceans all the air circulations are pushed poleward with the mid latitude weather systems compressed into a narrower but faster moving band nearer the poles.
In the case of Antarctica the centre of the continent might even get colder because there would be reduced air flows into and out of the interior. However the edges of the ice cap could well get a lot warmer especially in the areas projecting furthest from the south pole into the warmer surrounding seas and especially the West Antarctic Peninsula which is exactly what we have seen during the recent warming spell when the Antarctic interior has been getting colder but the West Antarctic Peninsula has been getting warmer. Conventional climatology sees that as a bit of a puzzle.
Once more my general climate description fits observed events better than the current climate models.

It is hard to believe this new drilling wasn’t due to the tax breaks under the Louisiana Movie project. Bruce Willis is gonna stop Mayans in 2012 from a coming through a time portal guarded by nesting penguins.

Michael(09:39:31) :
Most comments over at Huffington Post engage in moronic name calling, but many good posters are discussing the factual science behind the issue, and the sheeple are learning. I was surprised myself at the number of intelligent people that have infiltrated the site.
Shhhhhhhhh — you’ll spook ’em…

Obviously some American city, probably one of those red-state cities like Houston with all those oil refineries, got transported back in time to the Miocene. They then proceeded to destroy themselves by radically altering the perfect climate of the Miocene.

“Jimbo (12:24:00) :
Maybe this is why geologists are the most sceptical group among scientists when it comes to AGW. They know the earth has seen some radical swings in C02 levels and temperatures and the earth has somehow always ’stabilised’
”
From a geologist. The earth has no “stable state” , Change is the norm.

John S: Dinoflagellates are marine organisms, for the most part, or at least aquatic, hence not wind-dispersed.

Sorry… Miocene:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/20moll.jpg

OT, but interesting.
Pielke Snr’s views on the IPCC.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/presentation-at-the-university-of-texas-austin-titled-concerns-on-the-ipcc-report-%e2%80%93-the-actual-state-of-climate-science-by-roger-a-pielke-sr/

I propose that from this day forward the result of the ANDRILL AND-2A program be known as a Gorehole.

Snow storm in Montana and Wyoming, in the Wind River Range the may 3 to 4 feet of snow. I’m speechless.
http://www.weather.com/multimedia/videoplayer.html?clip=364&collection=national&from=hp_news

cotwome (12:48:58) :
Earth during the Miocene:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/20moll.jpg
How come the Sea levels are the same from today even though there’s almost no Ice in the antarctic? (based on that image.)

“Michael (11:09:27) :
I can’t wait to read stories about how sea life is exploding because of plankton, seaweed, and other life forms eating the elevated CO2. What a great planet we live on.”
Unfortunately, this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/arctic-seas-turn-to-acid
is what you’re much more likely to see. They’re already working on the next big scare – ocean acidification from excess carbon dioxide (man made, of course).

“Smokey (15:10:41)
In the geologic past, atmospheric CO2 levels were many times higher than today’s, for hundreds of millions of years at a time. The oceans never became acidic.”
I believe you but, nevertheless, this is being set up as the next panic button and it would be really nice if someone could break through the media blockade to let people know. Lord Monckton has already well and truly debunked this but how many people know that?

Has anybody asked the most important question?
What time frame is considered as “sudden” here? Are the authors referring to decades, centuries, millenia?
This enquiring mind wishes to know.

Scott A. Mandia (15:48:23) :

Has anybody asked the most important question?
What time frame is considered as “sudden” here? Are the authors referring to decades, centuries, millenia?
This enquiring mind wishes to know.

From above

According to the researchers, these fossils show that land temperatures reached a January average of 10 degrees Celsius

I believe that the current average summer temperature in Antarctica is 2 degrees Celsius. So at the “alarming” rate of heating of 0.15 degree/decade reported by Steig et al. (give or take a tenth of a degree or so), looks like we have about 500 years to get there. Would you consider that sudden?

It’s interesting science, but I think it’s applicability to the current AGW debate is somewhat limited.

Maybe this event could help get us some exposure. Bring your signs. My sign will say, It’s the Sun Stupid!
March on the Media – Operation Can You Hear Us Now?
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/109730#comment-1195816

Scott A. Mandia (15:48:23) :
“Has anybody asked the most important question?
What time frame is considered as “sudden” here? Are the authors referring to decades, centuries, millenia?
This enquiring mind wishes to know.”
Don’t know. What would you consider to be sudden? Would you consider the warming over the last 150 years to be sudden?

I have to second that, Smokey. It’s interesting to study temp and c02 correlations from Vostok and greenland. At no time did c02 ever amplify the temperature on close inspection of what available data there is.

Bill Illis says:

I forgot to add that there is no correlation at all to CO2 levels during this period.
CO2 was at a nice and toasty 240 ppm (glaciers in Canada kind of levels that is) during the warm spike found by these researchers. For the most of the period when Antarctica was melting back, CO2 levels were falling.

So, are you telling me that you have CO2 data with at least millenial resolution going back at least 15 million years!?! Pray tell, where did you get this data?!?
P Wilson says:

I have to second that, Smokey. It’s interesting to study temp and c02 correlations from Vostok and greenland. At no time did c02 ever amplify the temperature on close inspection of what available data there is.

That’s not what the scientists who have actually obtained and studied the data think.
Iren says:

“Smokey (15:10:41)
In the geologic past, atmospheric CO2 levels were many times higher than today’s, for hundreds of millions of years at a time. The oceans never became acidic.”
I believe you but, nevertheless, this is being set up as the next panic button and it would be really nice if someone could break through the media blockade to let people know. Lord Monckton has already well and truly debunked this but how many people know that?

What Smokey has told you here is a “red herring”. The reason that the ocean acidifies is that the acidification reactions due to the increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere happen at a rate faster than the rate at which limestone can be dissolved from rocks into the oceans to neutralize things. So, it is the ***RATE*** of rise of CO2 and not the absolute level that is important.
And, by the way, there is a past event that had a large rapid release of GHGs and led to a sharp warming and also to acidification of the oceans and to some dramatic extinctions. It is called the “PETM” (Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum) event and occurred about 55 million years ago. There has been a lot of study of it recently since it may be about the closest analogy found to our current “experiment” (although being that it was so long ago, I don’t think there is sufficient time resolution to tell if the rate of GHG release was really as rapid as it is now). Here is one article about it http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5728/1611 and you can look at the listed articles that have cited it to find even more recent studies.

Smokey says:

See, we’re all completely wrong, as usual, and Joel Shore has a corner on the truth.

This deserves a specific response because I think the implication here, that I am somehow being arrogant, is really quite a strange interpretation of how things unfold on this website. What I am telling you here are not my own original ideas about climate. I am simply explaining, as best I understand them, the results of the scientists who are actually working and actively publishing in the field. It seems rather strange to me that this would be considered somehow immodest while it would not be considered immodest for people, many (although not all) of whom have read very little of the peer-reviewed literature in the field, to presume to understand climate science better than those who have spent much of their professional career studying it.

“Sudden” should be defined as a period of time where people do not have time to react and adapt. Was the change in climate from the medieval warm period when Greenland began to freeze over so sudden that the occupants did not have time to react? No, they eventually had time to decide to get in their boats and leave the area. When in history was climate change so sudden that the occupants had no choice but to die because there was no time to react. Name just one?
A big meteor hitting the earth, that would be sudden.”Sudden” may happen if the Sun began to have an increased or decreased output of say 5 or 10%, over say a 1 year period, and a year or 2 later, the earth’s temperature rose or fell dramatically trapping people in ice storms or was killing people due to famine. What are the odds of this type of event happening given the history. 1 in 1 million? 1 in 10 million? I like those odds. The Sun and meteors are outside our sphere of influence and are nothing to fret over day in and day out a is CO2.
What are the true odds of sudden man-made climate shift due to everyday activity? 1 in 1 billion? I like those odds. No need for any policy changes given these odds. Carry on.

Joel Shore (19:00:43) : “…The point is simply one of timescales. Yes, dramatic changes can occur…but unless there is something like a major asteroid impact or a supervolcano in the next century, the largest perturbation to the climate system is going to be from the increase in CO2 levels by a significant amount…”
————————————————————-
But Joel, you are assuming that CO2 will cause a measurable change to climate…. This is not the case so far. The opposite is true actually, there is a large divergence in CO2 and Temperature for the last decade, when comparing the satellite temp record to CO2 rise.
Also, CO2 remains a very small trace gas in the Atmosphere . As far as GHG’s go, water Vapor is the most abundant GHG. Over 95% of the atmosphere’s GHG component is Water vapor.
I always liken anthropogenic CO2’s effect on climate to that of a fly sitting on the starboard railing of an ocean liner. A fly has mass, therefor it has an effect. But can you measure its effect on the stability of the ocean liner?….. No you can’t….. You can theorize its effect. But in natural conditions you will never be able to actually measure it with any certainty.

Lucy Skywalker,
Yup – geologist I am.
I’m not sure how deep the ice cap could be – apart from drilling, the only other method is seismic.

ot: GOREBAGE IN = GOREBAGE OUT

Jeff L (20:37:50)
“… separation of variables – show me where you have removed ALL other factors except CO2 in the temperature signal, then we can talk about the effect of CO2. The fact is we still don’t know or understand all the forcing mechanisms in our climate system & how they interact (feedback), so there is no way to logically put all the blame on CO2. …”
I would like to propose a convention to be used on WUWT:
We use the term “Climate Variation” (cV) to refer to all of the factors that *are not* caused by anthropogenic activity, and “Climate Deterioration” (cD) by those factors that *are*.
Thus cD would be defined as the sum of the atmospheric output from incense burning, cigarette smoking, SUV farts, garlic consumption, fish-head soup, underarm odor, and anything else that I personally feel to be objectionable in polite society.

SSam
“And something lofting tons of seawater and pollen into the air towards the general direction of Antarctica is out of the realm of possibility…”
Have a study of the Siwilak Hills in the foothills of the Himalayas and the fossil content of some of those sediments- a veritable melange of extinct fauna and fauna slammed against the Himalayas as a wet sediment – but not out of the realm of possibility because it actually happened.
Same goes for the Alaskan and Siberian muck deposits – of Pleistocene age.
And then our ancestors had something to say about catastrophes as well, but as Lyell showed, those too are out of realm of possibility….
Or were they.

Jack Green (05:12),
There is probably some oil and gas at Antarctica but not as much as other places on the planet.
Antarctica is the unlucky continent in the sense that continental drift has left it around the south pole for most of the last 500 million years.
It has been a little farther north, it has been on the Pacific side, it has been on the Indian ocean side, it was locked together with other continents over the south pole three different times.
It has been glaciated over on at least 5 separate periods of time lasting tens of million of years in the geologic past when most of the oil and gas was forming.

Aaaahhh! Another “proof” for them that Global Warming will bring about a new Ice Age…

Scott’s question about the rate of the Antarctic temperature increase is important and deserves an answer.
From what I’ve learned from the documentary “day after tomorrow” I believe that we’re talking about 10C in 14 hours, or in that ballpark.

quote: And something lofting tons of seawater and pollen into the air towards the general direction of Antarctica is out of the realm of possibility…
Not knowing if you were really serious, or not I got an itch to check out extraterrestrial objects, and to my surprise there was a reference to the Patagonian meteor craters. You can even see them on Google. With the Patagonian meteor strike depressions, it might be interesting to ask if there were orbiting debris which just might have the right trajectory to do exactly that.
Just how often has the Earth rung like a gong after being hit?

Smokey says:

From what I see, your main critique is with the time frame of the chart I posted:
“Looking at global temperature trend over intervals of around a decade and less to determine the response to rising CO2 is like looking at temperatures in Rochester over a week-long period to determine the seasonal cycle.”
OK then, let’s look at a really long time frame showing the non-relationship between CO2 and temperature: click. See? There is no correlation even in a 4.6 billion year time scale.

There are about 8 orders of magnitude between looking on the scale of a decade or less and the scale of billions of years. You might try not going to one extreme or the other.
It looks to me that there is in fact some degree of correlation between CO2 and temperature on that graph, although admittedly there is other stuff going on too. So, here are some questions a REAL skeptic might ask about that graph: (1) Where is that data from and how accurate is it believed to be? (2) What is the temporal resolution? (3) What others things are changing over those sorts of timescales that might have a significant effect on climate? (4) What has led scientists who actually study paleoclimatology for a living to conclude that CO2 plays a very important role in past climates?
J. Hansford:

Also, CO2 remains a very small trace gas in the Atmosphere . As far as GHG’s go, water Vapor is the most abundant GHG. Over 95% of the atmosphere’s GHG component is Water vapor.

(1) Because they absorb differently in different parts of the spectrum, simply comparing the amount of two greenhouse gases is a very poor way of estimating their relative effects. Nonetheless, it is true that water vapor is the most important gas in producing the ~33 C natural greenhouse effect. It is also true that the concentration of water vapor is determined by the climate, with more water vapor as the climate warms, and hence it acts as a positive feedback on warming produced by something else such as the long-lived greenhouse gases like CO2.

I always liken anthropogenic CO2’s effect on climate to that of a fly sitting on the starboard railing of an ocean liner.

And, you get this notion from where exactly? Certainly not from actually computing the radiative forcing due to a change in CO2 levels. You can liken it to anything you want but unless you have evidence to back up this analogy, it tells us nothing beyond the thought processes in your own mind.

Joel.
sometime late last year I put the following question to one of the IPCC’s senior assessors, and the reply was “Have you read the 2007 4th assessment report on radiative forcing?”
However, I had and have again, yet doesn’t answer the question at all, or address the issues. The crucial calculations to justify the c02 thesis were absent from the UPCC report . It wasn’t a challenge, but a question, so if it *was* answered then there is an unequivocal argument for AGW, and the debate would be over.
Q) Given 80 millions tons of carbon dioxide, (22 million tons of carbon) what, in terms of the current understanding of the climate, its sensitivity, and the proportion of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to all c02, and in turn, to the whole atmosphere does this represent, and what does it do to the temperature? Bear in mind the following qualifications:
1) all c02 is 0.038% of the atmosphere,
2) that some 3% of that fraction is annually anthropogenic
3) c02 delays outgoing heat at 15microns in the spectroscopic absortion range
4) outgoing radiation is between 0 and 1% of the heat budget,
5) c02 moves between air and oceans, soils and other sinks quite quickly.
6) There are 3067 gigatons of c02 in the atmosphere
7) the first 50ppm of c02 delays that fractional (5% of 0-1% heat budget) heat transfer into space, and anything additional only increases the metric range of this delay, and not the heat absorption, due to its logarithmic absorption factor.
8) only the carbon atom, and not the 2 oxygen atoms have this effect.
9) given natural variability, over 98% of carbon dioxide fluctuations are naturally occurring.
10) At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas dissolved in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid. (oceans),
11) that oceans and vegetation absorbs c02 exponentially and not logarithmically on a diurnal and seasonal basis.
12) Water vapour is hundreds of times more powerful than c02 as a ghg – and has 3 times the thermal absorption bandwidth. A 1% change in vapour is equivalent to a 200% change in c02, yet still isn’t a radiative climate forcing.
Use data to highlight the direct causal affinity so that it is demonstrable and verifiable.
So far, none has addressed any of these issues . The best they can say “It is likely that…”, or “we are confident that….” and these are matters of conjecture and speculation than empirical science.

The delay between temperature and c02 is recorded as being 800-2000 years. Total Ocean current have a total of 800 years cycle, and the MWP was around 800 years ago.
It could resonably be said that today’s increase in c02 is from the MWP. (800 years ago) That means that if we stopped all anthropogenic c02, it would continue to rise.

Joel Shore said:
“The main cause (of recent cooling) is likely simply the moderately-strong La Nina we had recently, although there might also be some contribution from the solar cycle minimum.”
Heck, Joel, thats the essence of what I’ve been saying and seeking to justify for more that 18 months now.
The thing is how can you say in one breath that those two processes can cause cooling yet still seem to deny that those same two factors in opposite modes could have been responsible for most if not all of the observed 20th Century warming (though even that warming may have been overstated due to UHI effects).
As it happens under the tutelage of Leif I am drifting away from solar influences except on longer timescales but current solar events might help to resolve that issue over the next few years.
The thing then is whether oceanic variations in the rate of energy release could possibly cover all observed global air temperature changes over the past 2000 years on their own or with only a small solar contribution.
After all it could just be a coincidence that since sunspots started being counted the ebb and flow of sunspots was in approximately the same phase as oceanic cycles.
As the 20th Century shows us the solar and oceanic influences can either offset one another or supplement one another and in earlier times it may be that there were periods when sunspot numbers were high but nevertheless oceanic variations induced colder climates. We just don’t know at the moment.
Anyway I am coming to the view that oceanic variations could indeed achieve it all on timescales of up to a little over 2000 years which is all we can reasonably reliably discern from historical records rather than increasingly suspect and abusable proxy evidence.
To explain:
1) ENSO variability obviously affects global air temperatures on interannual time scales.
2) We have recently discerned that every 30 years or so there is an oceanic phase shift that increases or decreases the relative intensities of El Nino and La Nina events to produce overall warming or cooling of global air temperatures
3) We are then left with the issue of background warming or cooling trends which in combination with PDO phase changes produce a ‘stepped’ appearence upwards or downwards for longer term warming or cooling spells respectively.
4) We have all been discussing whether the 20th Century upward stepping is solar induced or CO2 induced. I prefer solar causes on the basis of historical evidence but as Leif says the correlation is not good enough to constitue proof (or in his view even any reason for considering the possibility but he cannot yet persuade me on that).
5) What if the longer tern cycling is also oceanic ?
Just as the PDO phase shifts alter the relative strengths of El Nino and La Nina events a 500 year or so underlying oceanic cycle would alter the relative strengths of the consecutive PDO positive and negative phase shifts and there you would get a stepped progression upward or downward as the global air temperatures cycle from Roman Warm Period to Dark Ages to Mediaeval Warm Period to Little Ice Age to the recent Modern Maximum.
6) Then note that the global air circulation systems all shift latitudinally in response to ENSO variations and in response to PDO phase shifts and it is clear that they would also do so in response to those 500 year ocean cycles.
7) Finally note that every climate change ever observed has been a consequence of a particular location or region shifting it’s position in relation to the nearest air circulation systems.
We then have a coherent explanation for every climate shift ever observed directly by mankind without needing CO2 or solar effects as a significant forcing agent.
Over to you.

Joel Shore (19:28:50) :
“….. I have explained it to you about 30 times. Shall we go for 31? Looking at global temperature trend over intervals of around a decade and less to determine the response to rising CO2 is like looking at temperatures in Rochester over a week-long period to determine the seasonal cycle.”
So how long does it take for radiation to travel from the surface of the earth to the atmospheric CO2 where it is absorbed? And how long does it take for CO2 to absorb the radiation when it gets there, and then reimit it? And then return to the earth’s surface? You think 30 years. My guess is that it would all be over well within a second.
Or maybe it’s the fanciful water vapour positive feedback loop that takes 30 years? It takes 30 years for a cloud to form? Once formed they persist for 30 years?
Enquiring minds look forward to your 32nd explanation.

KimW (14:31:37) :
‘… my sister-in-law has a PhD in Biochemistry. I was expressing my disbelief in AGW to her and her reply was, ” So every other scientist in the world is wrong and you are right”?.’
You might ask her whether the medical scientists funded by Big Pharma are also right. The money in Big Green is much more than Big Pharma.

tty (09:23:34) :

Your belief is quite unfounded. In most of Antarctica it is more like -20 degrees Celsius. Average summer temperatures above zero only occurs near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Thanks, I guess I should have checked the second google hit and not the first.
http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215022/climate.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215022/climate.htm
As is typical of “science by press release”, it’s not clear to me if the researchers are talking about the whole continent or just the Ross Ice Shelf region.
But using -20 C as the average for the whole continent, if the study also refers to the whole continent also, the the current “alarming” rate of warming means we have about 2000 years to get there.
Scott hasn’t come back to tell us what his “enquiring mind” considers “sudden” to be.

Color me confused. I read and re-read the above, and nowhere did I find informationa bout whether this core they are talking about is an antarctic ice core, or whether it is a core from the ground. They talk about “sediments”, and that is not a term I have seen used before when referring to Antarctic ice cores.
So which is it; ice or rock ?

Britannic no-see-um (17:44:57) :
I have to confess, that’s the first time I’ve seen the word “dinoflagellate” used in a sentence.
I’m glad I looked it up, or I might still think it’s something Fred Flintstone might be scolding his pet about. 🙂

I am still trying to find out what sudden means to these researchers and the rate of warming. I am still here.
Sudden is subjective. I think the global warming in the past few decades has been sudden and I think the warming in the past century to be sudden.
Decades is definitely sudden and many times centuries is sudden. It all depends on the rate of change.

Joel Shore (19:28:50) : “Smokey, I think you are pretty much “Exhibit A” as to why it might be a waste of my time to ever write an article for WUWT. Why should I say things if you are simply going to ignore them? You don’t even attempt to respond with intelligent, coherent arguments…”
You are 180 degrees out of phase on that accusation, but thanks for the chuckle.
And Joel, your ad homs…weaken YOUR arguments still.
In the mean time….show the evidence. Write that article. Show the evidence of a trace gas causing runaway AGW.
Prove it. Show it. The burden of proof is squarely on your side.
The skeptic side is not obligated to do one damn thing but science business as usual…
Those that posit a fantastic theory…are thereby obligated to back it up…with hard evidence (not just GCM extrapolations).
Where is it? Show forth the hard evidence of significant “anthropogenic” global warming.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

p wilson says:

1) all c02 is 0.038% of the atmosphere,

Correct. However, since ~99% of the atmospheric constituents are transparent to IR radiation, the ones that aren’t have a disproportionate effect. Furthermore, the radiative effect of any constituent is not linear in its concentration (except at extremely low concentrations) but rather rises fast at first and then more slowly. This is another reason why small amounts can have disproportionately-large effects.

2) that some 3% of that fraction is annually anthropogenic

What you are doing when you say this is looking only at emissions into the atmosphere and ignoring the large amounts going the other way. I.e., there are large exchanges between the oceans and atmosphere and between the oceans and biosphere, but before the industrial revolution these were in so close balance that for the last ~10000 years, the CO2 levels had been something like 270 +- 10 ppm and in the last 750000 years, they had always been between 180 and 300 ppm. Now the levels are ~385ppm. What we are doing is taking a source of carbon that has been long locked away and rapidly releasing it into the atmosphere.

3) c02 delays outgoing heat at 15microns in the spectroscopic absortion range

I don’t really know what you mean by delay. What adding CO2 does is decrease the RATE in W/m^2 at which the earth emits radiation to space. When that occurs, the rate of emission is then less than the rate of absorption of energy from the sun and this causes the climate to warm to the point when the emission (via the Steffan Boltzmann Law) once again balances the absorption.

4) outgoing radiation is between 0 and 1% of the heat budget,

This is utter nonsense. If that were true, the climate system would be heating up like crazy! In fact outgoing radiation and incoming radiative energy from the sun are generally very close to balanced (within perhaps a percent or so). Ask Roy Spencer; I believes he’s involved in the satellite missions that are measuring this emission!

5) c02 moves between air and oceans, soils and other sinks quite quickly.

True…but for the ocean part, it is only in the upper part of the ocean and the amount that it can absorb quickly saturates. Exchange with the deep ocean is much slower. This means that about half of what we emit is taken up by the ocean and biosphere quite quickly but the other half slowly decays in a non-exponential manner.

8) only the carbon atom, and not the 2 oxygen atoms have this effect.

Another ridiculous statement. The absorption bands are due to excitations of the molecule as a whole. It makes no sense to say it is all due to the carbon.

9) given natural variability, over 98% of carbon dioxide fluctuations are naturally occurring.

Balderdash! We are responsible for essentially all of the rise in CO2 from ~280ppm before the industrial revolution to ~385ppm today. And, it would have gone up about twice as much if not for the fact that some of it has gone into the upper oceans (where it is causing ocean acidification) and some into the biosphere.

10) At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas dissolved in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid. (oceans),

Correct.

11) that oceans and vegetation absorbs c02 exponentially and not logarithmically on a diurnal and seasonal basis.

What the upper oceans do is absorb some of the excess CO2 quite rapidly and then saturate.

12) Water vapour is hundreds of times more powerful than c02 as a ghg – and has 3 times the thermal absorption bandwidth. A 1% change in vapour is equivalent to a 200% change in c02, yet still isn’t a radiative climate forcing.

No. It is not hundreds of time more powerful as a GHG. If I recall correctly, it accounts for somewhere around 70-90% of the natural greenhouse effect of 33 C (depending on how you measure), with CO2 accounting for most of the rest. Your statement about 1% change in water vapor vs 200% change in CO2 is also nonsense. And, the point about water vapor is that its concentration is essentially slave to the temperature, so water vapor acts as a feedback, not a forcing.

It could resonably be said that today’s increase in c02 is from the MWP. (800 years ago) That means that if we stopped all anthropogenic c02, it would continue to rise.

More nonsense for many reasons. For one thing, an 800 year delay wouldn’t mean nothing happens for 800 years and then it suddenly shoots up. Second, in order to account for the CO2 rise one would need the warming to be about the same as the warming between the last glacial maximum and now, which is about a 5 C global warming. Third, where then is the anthropogenic CO2 that we are emitting going? You are claiming that the system is magically absorbing all of the CO2 that we are emitting and then independently deciding to emit about half that amount on its own. And, fourth, there are of course the isotope measurements that show that the CO2 accumulation is due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Joel. I’ve verified that my qualifications are legitimate. Your observation of the outgoing radiation budget are based on mathematical equations from NASA, and not on thermodynamic science.
I know that you like to be contrarian just for the sake of it, so won’t respond to each case in point. Water vapour excepted. It absorbs heat over three times the bandwidths of c02, and at the bandwidths required for outgoing radiation. At 15C, c02 doesn’t absorb heat. It only absorbs at 13-15 microns which is subzero. C02 from the equator therefore isn’t intercepted by c02. Its only in polar regions where c02 interfered with heat

P Wilson:

Joel. I’ve verified that my qualifications are legitimate. Your observation of the outgoing radiation budget are based on mathematical equations from NASA, and not on thermodynamic science.

No, my statements are based on the First Law of Thermodynamics and the Steffan-Boltzmann Equation for radiative transfer (although to get the energy balance result, you really only need to know that radiative emission is an increasing function of the temperature).
And, as I noted, even if you don’t want to believe long-understood physical laws, you can look at the satellite measurements of the radiation emitted from the earth. Your views are in conflict with the entire field of remote sensing, which is arguably the most important technology of the satellite era.
There is no serious scientific argument regarding the radiative forcing due to a given increase in CO2. As I’ve noted before, even Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen agree with the statement that the radiative forcing for a CO2 doubling is around 4 W/m^2, give our take ~10%. This is not controversial stuff in the scientific community.

What does this outgoing radiation stand as afigure? If it is heat from the oceans then I can accept. If it is heat from solid matter then not, as temperatures stabilise to the ambient temperature, from which point they cease to emit heat. (2nd law of thermoydnamics)
come to think of it, thats why a match goes cold very soon after its extinguished.
If this thesis was the correct one then that heat from the match would migrate elsewhere. It doesn’t.

savethesharks says:

And Joel, your ad homs…weaken YOUR arguments still.

It is not an ad hom to simply call someone out on continuing to repeat the same arguments and claiming that noone has responded to them when in fact we have.

The skeptic side is not obligated to do one damn thing but science business as usual…
Those that posit a fantastic theory…are thereby obligated to back it up…with hard evidence (not just GCM extrapolations).

Actually, you are wrong. The scientific community has accepted the theory of AGW because of the evidence that has been presented.
So, if you think that you have no obligations, then that is fine with me. But, you are dooming yourself to irrelevance scientifically since the scientific community will go on accepting the current theory unless the “skeptic” side comes up with convincing counter-evidence. So far, this doesn’t look very promising. And, frankly, the “skeptic” side would do much better for itself if, rather than promulgating all sorts of nutty arguments, you guys just focused on issues where there is at least some significant scientific uncertainty, like the cloud feedback and its effect on the climate sensitivity. (To Roy Spencer’s credit, that is what he is doing for the most part, except for some ill-advised forays into the question of whether the current rise in CO2 is anthropogenic. And, while I doubt Spencer’s viewpoint will eventually carry the day, I do at least applaud him for raising in the peer-reviewed literature some hypotheses that, at least to this non-climate-scientist, seem scientifically-interesting.)

Joel Shore (09:37:22)
Quite wrong.
It is on the basis of evidence and data that “skeptics” make the case. There’s a very considerable corpus of this. Only I would describe it as impartial rather than skeptical

HOT OFF THE PRESSES!
Dr. Warny was kind enough to send me the PDF of this paper. Sorry to disappoint, but the sudden time scale the press release refers to is 50,000 years and the brief warming was 200,000 years.

So… In summary…
CO2 correlates quite well with temperatures at two times during the Phanerozoic Eon (the last 600 million years or so):
1) The Pleistocene – During which the delta-T always preceded the delta-CO2… A good indication that temperature changes can cause changes in atmospheric CO2.
2) 1977-2003 (maybe as recently as 2005 or even 2007… Although the correlation may have been busted as long ago as 1999).
The correlation fails at all other scales and time frames. That’s a heck of a basis for climate change policy.
So… Since at almost all time scales from “weather” to “geological”, CO2 fails to correlate with temperature… It’s “Plan B” for the Gorebots: Ocean Acidification. Oh… One teeny problem. The Phanerozoic oceanic pH has pretty well been between 7.8 and 8.3 irrespective of atmospheric CO2. The Paleocene-Eocene transition is just about the only documented time when the oceans acidified. Well then! What do the oceans do with CO2? They make limestone, lots and lots of limestone. Even at the very shortest of time scales, the oceans make limestone.
A recent experiment was conducted on fish otoliths (ear bones) to demonstrate the ill effects of ocean acidification. It was assumed that a sudden increase in CO2 would acidify the water and the acid would shrink fish otoliths. Well guess what happened? The otoliths grew; they did not shrink…Did you hear? CO2 makes fish ears bigger
Prior to the experiment, they had assumed that CO2, through ocean acidification, would shrink the otolith. The exact opposite result occurred.
The otoliths grew rather than shrank.
According to the ocean acidification hypothesis, increasing CO2 uptake by the oceans should acidify sea water and destroy calcium carbonate shells and other carbonate structures, like otoliths. The experiment yielded the opposite result. The fish otoliths grew at a faster rate due to the excess CO2.
If the excess CO2 was acidifying the sea water in the experiment, the otoliths should have been reduced in size as had been expected.
The article stated that CO2 was making the seas more acidic. There is no evidence that CO2 has made the seas more acidic. There are assumptions that more CO2 will make the seas more acidic; however there is no evidence that this has actually occurred in the oceans. Some studies suggest that oceanic pH has declined by 0.1 since the 1750’s; but that is well within the 0.5 range of natural pH variation. Over the last 600 million years, the pH of Earth’s oceans appears to have pretty well been in the same range that it is today: 7.8 to 8.3 irrespective of atmospheric CO2 concentrations up to 20 times today’s levels. The experiment tends to suggest that that the excess CO2 was accommodated by increased calcium carbonate production rather than through sea water acidification.
In this particular experiment, they were looking for evidence of oceanic acidification through a reduction of otolith size. The opposite result occurred and they’re still trying to say they found evidence of oceanic acidification. Science doesn’t work that way. Or at least, it’s not supposed to work that way. When results falsify your hypothesis you don’t get to say that the falsification supports the original hypothesis.

Joel Shore (09:37:22) :And, frankly, the “skeptic” side would do much better for itself if, rather than promulgating all sorts of nutty arguments, you guys just focused on issues where there is at least some significant scientific uncertainty, like the cloud feedback and its effect on the climate sensitivity.
What are you talking about?? They are already doing just that. As I said, for the Skeptic side of things (hmm….I thought the word “skeptic” went hand in hand with science, but that is another conversation), but, as I said, for the Skeptic side of things: “Its Science Business as Usual.”
The Spencers, the Svaalgards, the Anna Vs, etc…all are going on about the business of doing what they do best.
The AGW controversy is a side issue (albeit a big one), and it will not derail the Scientific Method completely, because there are plenty of the above individuals and others like them, that will fight to the last day, to prevent it!
To quote the X Files: “The Truth is Out There.”
And it is. We just gotta find it, and it AIN’T easy, any more than the “science” of you-know-what…is “settled.”
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

final note to joel shore on pre industrial c02.
that is the measurement from ice cores in vostok. During the period 1810-1957, there exist over 90,000 valid measurements of c02 across the northern hemisphere and india. Often in excess of 500ppm, and most frequently just either side of 400ppm in 1840. Ice data show the same period at 280ppm, in 1840. We can therefore say that real measurements are more accurate than ice core measurements. They are the most minimal proxy, but do, however show a trend.
Your (the AGW) case is no better than taking winter in Antarctica as the starting point then telling us that catastrophe is around the corner as temperatures are rising into summertime, elsewhere than antarctica

Janice (09:52:14) :
Earth during the Miocene:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/20moll.jpg
How come the Sea levels are the same from today even though there’s almost no Ice in the antarctic? (based on that image.)”
Sea level was about 130 metres higher than today during this specific period.

“Janice (09:52:14) :
“the_Butcher (14:22:11) :
cotwome (12:48:58) :
Earth during the Miocene:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/20moll.jpg
How come the Sea levels are the same from today even though there’s almost no Ice in the antarctic? (based on that image.)”
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Al Gore is correct, and that all the ice on the planet is shortly going to melt and become water. We can all do that math on that one, and it ends up that the oceans would rise something like 200 feet (to simply round to a nice number). ”
apparently, the radius of the earth would increase,a s more water wentr to the equator, and this would slow down teh rotational velocity of the earth which would cause dramatic cooling

Dave Middleton says:

CO2 correlates quite well with temperatures at two times during the Phanerozoic Eon (the last 600 million years or so):
…
The correlation fails at all other scales and time frames.

That is not true. You just have to look more carefully and control for the effects of other factors. Also, there are a variety of reasons why scientists understand that the CO2 – temperature oscillations during the glacial – interglacial cycles worked in both directions. I.e., changes in temperatures did trigger the changes in CO2 but then the CO2 helped to amplify the temperature change (and to synchronize the change in the two hemispheres…in fact, I believe the latest data shows that the change in CO2 only lagged behind the temperature in one of the hemisphere).
And, the science of how CO2 causes changes in temperature is well-understood even if the issue of feedbacks introduces some uncertainty in the magnitude.
As for ocean acidification, I think the data showing that the oceans have become more acidic is quite robust. It is true that we are still in the relatively early stages of understanding the effects on various marine species…and there may be some “winners” as well as “losers”. But, it would be very optimistic indeed to believe that there would be a net benefit from such a change…and, as I understand it, the PETM evidence so far does not give reason for such optimism.

Joel. I can see how the S Boltmann constant has been used to adapt itself to the climate, but effectively its a fraudulent use of it. Efectively, its a null hypothesis, pulled out of thin air. If it were a correct hypothesis, blackbody objects, trees, asphalt etc would be emitting more radiation than human bodies at night, beause they received more exterior radiation. (I presume the S Boltmann equation is how NASA defined outgoing radiation as 41% of the total.) In reality, that is a mathematical equation and not a physical one. If it were 41% then humans wouldn’t be detectable, as everything terrestrial would be throwing the same light. As this is clearly not happening, we can conclude that re-radiation is significantly below the 41%. In fact it is 0-1%,
so I quote:
There is supposedly an equation which will show how much infrared radiation is being given off by matter at any temperature, but it is too absurd to be used. It’s the Stephan-Boltzmann Constant.
It shows 459 watts per square meter being given off at room temperature of 27°C. That’s almost five 100 watt bulbs from half of a table top. Night vision equipment shows it isn’t happening.
The Stephan-Boltzmann constant is this:
5.67051 x 10-8 x K4
This result is the number of watts per square meter of infrared radiation supposedly given off by matter at a temperature represented by K (degrees Kelvin, which is 273 + °C).
For exactness, this calculation must include the emissivity, which means percent radiation which is blocked due to such things as reflection. But for nonmetalic surfaces, the emissivity is around 90-95%, which means it can be ignored for the rough estimates of nonmetals.
At a normal temperature of 27°C (80°F), the calculated result without emissivity is 459 W/m2.
At the assumed average temperature of the earth (15°C, 59°F), it’s 390 W/m2.
At the freezing temperature of water (0°C, 32°F), it’s 315 W/m2.
On a hot day of 37°C (98°F), it’s 524 W/m2.
Normal temperature matter is not giving off that much infrared radiation. Virtually everything in physics is in error, unless someone gets the error corrected, which requires a lot more accountability than often exists.
If freezing water were emitting and absorbing the heat of three 100 watt light bulbs per square meter, the heat would interfere with the freezing process. In some environments, water would freeze at 40°F, and elsewhere, it would freeze at 25°F depending upon how much environmental radiation there was at that location. The stability of the freezing temperature of water shows that there is not a significant amount of radiation being emitted and absorbed at that temperature. NOTE: 41% of 1366 watts per square meter is far greater than that of a living body.
no matter how equations are pulled out of thin air, they don’t apply, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics operates. That is: objects giving off radiation are losing heat, and accept radiation when they are colder than the ambient temperature.
Picture a poker pulled out of a fire. its hotter than the air, and heats the air around it, whilst losing temperature. Eventually both reach the same temperature: the ambient temperature at which point the poker gives off no heat. Air has a very low heat capacity so doesn’t add heat effectively. (which is why animals give off more heat than the earth)
so you are quite wrong
i just noticed your isotope as ameasure of how much c02 is anthropogenic. In fact it has been established
Proof from isotopic mass balance
The calculations confirm that maximum 4% (14 GT C) of the air CO2 has anthropogenic origin; 96% is indistinguishable from non-fossil-fuel (natural marine and juvenile) sources. by the methods you propose. (Segalstad et al).
Obviously, that measn that the increase in c02 over the last 100 years is not anthropogenic.
Finally, oceanic ph, biology and chemistry confirm that acidification is not the case, and that oceans are an infinite buffer to carbon dioxide.
http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Tom_Segalstad.ppt

I agree that the science of c02 change in relation to temperature is well understood. (I’ve studied it) spectroscopy is quite interesting in fact. Even Mr Angstrom pu the theories of Keeling and Arrhenius to the test by putting as much c02 as to be found in the atmosphere in a vessell. He found that the amount of radiation getting through didn’t change on doubling or halving the quantities of c02.
Nothing about the properties of c02 have changed since Angstrom’s day. It is only when a closed vessell filled with 100% c02 is heated from the same source as another that contains normal air that the rate of temperature decrease is lengthened in the c02 vessel (closed to convection)

Joel,
With respect I think you should give up.
If one has to increase complexity to salvage a point then one has lost.
All the best and most likely real life scenarios can be comfortably expressed in terms easily accessible in plain language to a layman.
E = mc2 is a prime example.
It boils down to a concept that everyone can understand
i.e.
The total energy content is equivalent to the mass of an object multiplied by the square of the speed of light (I hope I remembered that correctly) which is a very big number which causes a very big bang.
Every schoolboy can cope with that despite the level of genius required to produce it.
AGW lacks that characteristic.
Keep it simple, stupid.

Joel Shore;
How come the pro-AGW’ers always quote the Stefan-Boltzmann law as some kind of justification of their position but they never actually use it to determine anything except how warm the surface would be without greenhouse gases.
Let’s see what your extra 4 W/m^2 from a doubled CO2 results in according to the Stefan-Boltzmann equations.
Today = (390 W/m^2/5.67e-08)^0.25 = 288.0K = 15.0C
CO2 Doubled = (394 W/w^2/5.67E-08)^0.25 = 288.7K = 15.7C
So you can’t get very much warming from a little 4 Watts increase and the feedbacks on albedo and water vapour are going to be meagre with only a 0.7C increase.
So quit quoting the Stefan Boltzann laws if you are not going to use them properly.
Effectively, the impact of 4 watts/metre^2 is a “tuned” impact based on the assumption that temperatures will increase 0.75C per watt/metre^2 (not true) and that CO2 doubling will result in 3.0C per doubling therefore 4 is the right number. It is not based on physics measurements – it is a Hansen shortcut. The right number is probably about 9 to 11 watts per doubling but that would require re-writing the climate eqautions properly, something noone seems ready to do.

@joel Shore…
Joel, I’ll give you an A+ in persistence and courage. The way you wade into these debates merits a lot of respect.
I can’t categorically say that CO2 cannot drive climate change… But, as a geoscientist, I can tell you that I have never seen any direct evidence of it. There are lots of hypotheses for past greenhouse-driven episodes; however those are largely derived from the assumption that the moder climate is being modulated by fluctuations in greenhouse gases.
On ocean acidification… Please point me to the specific concrete evidence for it. I’ve read Caldeira and quite a few other papers on the subject; and I’ve yet to see any evidence of Co2-driven acidification that has actually occurred… Just models that predict future acidification. There seems to be a consensus that oceanic pH has dropped 0.1 since 1750 (although I have not found any empirical or observational backing for this assertion). The natural ~50-yr pH cycle is 0.5.
The only paper that I have seen that sort of presents the sort of geological-scale relationship of CO2, oceanic pH and climate change is Royer… And that was pretty well shot down when Shaviv and Veizer…

The analysis of Royer et al. (2004) assumes an unrealistically high pH correction. First, it neglects the ice-volume effect, which changes the relation between δ18O and ΔT. Second, this large pH correction implies high temperatures for seawater even during times of extensive glaciations.
Moreover, the analysis of Royer et al. (2004) consists of bootstrapping,
by introducing a correction to ΔT that is an implicit function of RCO2. It is then not surprising that a correlation between ΔT and RCO2 is obtained. This would be the case irrespective of the RCO2 model utilized.

About 6-10 years ago, I was beginning to believe the CO2-temperature connection, despite the fact that my education in 1970’s geology told me it was wrong. Since then, I’ve come back to where I was in 1980. Every bit of “evidence” for anthropogenic greenhouse gas-driven climate change has either been refuted or seriously challenged over the last 5 years or so. The only facet still standing is the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas – A fairly impotent greenhouse gas at far less than 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere.

P Wilson says:

Even Mr Angstrom pu the theories of Keeling and Arrhenius to the test by putting as much c02 as to be found in the atmosphere in a vessell. He found that the amount of radiation getting through didn’t change on doubling or halving the quantities of c02.

This might be true…but is irrelevant. The path length for such a vessel is much smaller than the pathlength in the atmosphere, which is why you have to go to the 100% CO2 case to get a large enough path length.

In antarctic ice core measurements that relate c02 to temperature, the lag is quite explicit at every juncture. So are the abrupt shifts over short time periods. If this data is correct then so be it. However, a 1C doubling could not be caused by c02. It could be caused by water vapour, all other things being equal, but this wouldn’t be a long term climate shift.
How subzero temperatures – the points at which c02 absorbs, or delays radiation – could increase other temperatures by 1C is a pure scientific deception. At any rate, 8% of outgoing heat that c02 intercepts puts it this explanation a physical error. Certainly, c02 would have quite an effect in a glacial climate, but not enough to pull it out of a glacial climate – certainly not an effect in a non glacial climate
I stand by my notion that c02 are cents, water vapour are dollar notes, whilst climate forcings are assembled wads of bank notes, for easy understanding by the layman

Joel Shore (08:41:46) :
Hey, nice fall-back positions.
If an old model doesn’t look so good, call it out-dated and crude.
If a new model doesn’t look so good, just say that not enough time has passed to adequately evaluate it.
If temperatures stop rising, just say they have been rising and are near record territory, even though the near constant drumbeat has been that AGW is accelerating and “it’s worse than we thought”.
And then you can always fall back on “uncertainty” and error bars, even though those phrases are carefully hidden when talking to the media.
You know, throwing Hansen’s 1988 model under the bus may not look so bad if AGW proponents weren’t saying how well it was standing up only a couple of years ago.

In other words, the forcings scenario of Line B in this graph was remarkably similar to what actually came to pass. It also just so happens that the observed temperature trend has matched very closely with the prediction represented by Line B. James Hansen was right on the money and the models he used proved successful.

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/hansen-has-been-wrong-before.php

…the 1988 paper estimated the forcings slightly on the low side. The result was a pretty good prediction. Definitely in the class of useful models.

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/01/1988-and-all-that-as-soon-as-nonsense.html
I guess it’s easy to be patient when nothing’s falsifiable.
Just curious Scott and Joel, how patient do you think either of you would be if you were trying to argue an opposing point of view at one of the above blogs or on RealClimate?

@ John M (15:43:36) :
John, are you suggesting that the press release is more accurate than the paper itself?
Preliminary dating of the AND-2A core via magnetostratigraphy, isotope stratigraphy, and biostratigraphy (Acton et al., 2008) places
the peak of the 312–310 mbsf warm interval ca. 15.7–15.5 Ma ago
The area being observed laid down 2m of sediment. That takes quite a bit of time.
Here is a screen capture:
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/warny.gif

@ John M (16:22:35) :
Just curious Scott and Joel, how patient do you think either of you would be if you were trying to argue an opposing point of view at one of the above blogs or on RealClimate?
Speaking only for myself, chances are that I would quickly learn why I was wrong and I would thank them for enlightening me. 🙂

REPLY: Scott I know you think RC is fair and all, but really, you are deluded. Read this http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/busted/
-Anthony

Scott Mandia
“At the top of the atmosphere”, the atmospheric pressure is about 1/5 that of sea level. That means radiation will travel 5 times as far before being completely absorbed, which is 50 meters for CO2.”
given that c02 absorbs heat available to it in 10 metres from the earth, doubling c02 would decrease this distance to 5 metres. It wouldn’t change the temperature. Radiation is the limiting factor and not “greenhouse gases”. It also measn that warming cannot occur beyond the area where ghgs absorb radiation. they can trap heat in the stratosphere, but is so neglible as to have no effect. Besides, the stratosphere doesn’t influence the troposphere, where the climate takes place.
if water vapour increases in the troposphere, there is certainly no scientific mechanism by which it anthropogenic. Radiation is the limiting factor and not the amount of ghgs.
Also, the top of the troposhere is very cold. Given that it is very cold, it is physically impossible to produce more heat at ground level.
Again there are great limitations imposed, the further up the atmosphere one goes. Because the greenhouse effect isn’t working where it is supposed to be, climatologists pretent that there is someting unusual happening in the troposhere.
Again, it sounds like they are looking at the end result and then adjusting equations to produce the 1C that cannot be delivered where ghg’s are supposed toi have their effect.
Actually, these aforementioned problems are the least of what is wrong with the anthropogenic consensus, according to atmospheric height.

I once tried that method of asking a question about the relatively low heat capacity of air on ‘RC’, in response to the fact that the temperature plummeted by 10C *immediately* in the zone of the recent eclipse, then returned back to nrmal when the event was over. They called me a troll and snipped my post.

Bill Illis: Well, I guess you believe satellite data when they suit your purposes and whatever data you can get your hands on instead of the satellite data when it suits your purposes. The satellite data is clear on the subject of upper tropospheric moistening for both fluctuations and long term trends. The radiosonde data is known to have severe problems and I’ve never even seen people try to look at the fluctuations with it.
P Wilson: Frankly, you can write nonsense faster than I can correct it. I give up. I may be patient, as Scott Mandia says but I ain’t a saint!
I think what I have learned from my many months of posting here is there has to be some commonality of interests in order to have a meaningful dialog. When people are dead-set on disbelieving modern science and believing any nonsense that they can get their hands on, there is really no convincing them otherwise.

Joel Shore (20:18:45) :
Bill Illis: Well, I guess you believe satellite data when they suit your purposes and whatever data you can get your hands on instead of the satellite data when it suits your purposes. The satellite data is clear on the subject of upper tropospheric moistening for both fluctuations and long term trends.
HUH??? Bro…are you blind???
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3537/relativehumidity.png
Yoru clever sophistry just does not work, Joel. Give up. Thanks for giving it the college try.
I just wonder why…..WHY….is a smart guy like you pursuing a dead-end cause with limited evidence.
Again….to beat a dead horse….the burden of proof is on the party that makes a fantastic claim.
Show forth the evidence.
Not pages and pages of words.
Pure, simple, hard, fast…evidence.
This is the witching hour…
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

savethesharks (21:03:47) :
Joel Shore (20:18:45) : “When people are dead-set on disbelieving modern science and believing any nonsense that they can get their hands on, there is really no convincing them otherwise.”
Nice self-confession. Thanks for admitting that, Joel.
__________________________________
The way that Joel sees the world IS the only way that the world could possibly be.
Real scientists, Joel, will NEVER believe your so-called “modern science” where the conclusions are written before the experimental procedures are performed (if at all).
Of course, he could be the blog equivalent of a seminar caller, in which case, he’s doing an outstanding job. I hope his salary is commensurate with his performance.

Joel Shore (20:18:45)
I only dispute the notion of belief. Scientific method is based on observation, ratiocination and inference, and the experimental technique. i’m asure you’d agree. Not belief. So for example if you have A and B, you couldinfer the hitherto unsuspected existence of C.
there’s quite a explanative book that discussed the scientific method. “The Scientific Outlook” written sometimein the 1930’s by Bertrand Russell. well, there are other methods of drawing hypotheses. In the end you have to ask. “It works in theory, but does it work in practice?”

savethesharks:

HUH??? Bro…are you blind???
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3537/relativehumidity.png

Not satellite data. Just an example of people taking data randomly off the web that supports their preconceptions without bothering to ask even the most basic questions about it.
Here is satellite data: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841

Joel. The aqua satellite gives reliable data about tropospheric water vapour. So far it is showing the oposite trends from climate models. It show that far from a positive feedback, climate processed limit the warming effect and act as anegative feedback
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0315humidity.html

John M:

If an old model doesn’t look so good, call it out-dated and crude.
…
You know, throwing Hansen’s 1988 model under the bus may not look so bad if AGW proponents weren’t saying how well it was standing up only a couple of years ago.

I didn’t throw it under the bus. I said that it agreed within errorbars with the actual temperature record since 1988. However, my point is that this will not continue forever simply because the models aren’t perfect and because that model had one particular climate sensitivity and we only know the likely climate sensitivity within a fairly broad range. So, eventually, there will be a statistically-significant deviation. Given that the climate sensitivity in that model was near the top end of the likely range, one can only hope the real world deviates low.
I notice that “skeptics” demand that the predictions of AGW be perfect in order to believe them and yet totally ignore the the record that the “skeptics” themselves have on making such predictions. If one actually did a comparison, I think you would find that Hansen’s predictions have been head-and-shoulders above the “skeptics”!
Eric (skeptic) says:

The authors in your paper say that the water vapor increase with temperature is predominately lower troposphere.

Where do you see that? The paper is titled “The Radiative Signature of Upper Tropospheric Moistening”.
P Wilson says:

Joel. The aqua satellite gives reliable data about tropospheric water vapour. So far it is showing the oposite trends from climate models. It show that far from a positive feedback, climate processed limit the warming effect and act as anegative feedback
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0315humidity.html

Nice try. You have linked to a press release from 2004 that is for the publication of Andrew Dessler’s first paper on the subject. In that, he found that the relative humidity had decreased a little bit and since their impression was that climate models predict constant RH, they thought there might be a contradiction. However, in a follow-up paper published in 2006 ( http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/minschwaner2006.pdf ), the same authors (with one additional coauthor) actually looked at simulations of the climate models and found that they too predicted a small RH decrease and that the models and data agreed within errorbars:

The model mean decrease in relative humidity is -2.3% +/- 1.0% K^-1 at 250 mb, whereas observations indicate decreases of -4.8% +/- 1.7% K^-1 near 215 mb. These two values agree within the respective ranges of uncertainty, indicating that current global climate models are simulating the observed behavior of water vapor in the tropical upper troposphere with reasonable accuracy.

And, of course, there is this 2008 short review article on the subject that I linked to above ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;323/5917/1020 ) where Dessler and Sherwood conclude:

There remain many uncertainties in our simulations of the climate, but evidence for the water vapor feedback–and the large future climate warming it implies–is now strong.

Eric (skeptic) says:

Joel, the assumption of fixed RH is theoretically impossible. RH is never fixed, witness the fact that it decreases almost every day planetwide.

The climate models don’t make that assumption. Here is what Dessler and Sherwood say on the subject:

Both observations and models suggest that the magnitude of the water vapor feedback is similar to that obtained if the atmosphere held relative humidity constant everywhere. This should not be taken to mean that relative humidity will remain exactly the same everywhere. Regional variations of relative humidity are seen in all observed climate variations and in model simulations of future climate, but have a negligible net impact on the global feedback (12).

Eric (skeptic) says:

Contrary to those models there is ample evidence that upper tropospheric water vapor is decreasing and not just in the tropics, e.g. ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/84927.pdf

What you have linked to is a conference paper for almost 10 years ago that the authors admit is a preliminary analysis (and based on a quite short set of data). The field has advanced since then as the later papers by Soden et al., Dessler et al., and the review by Dessler and Sherwood discuss.

Joel Shore (06:27:05) :
savethesharks: “HUH??? Bro…are you blind???
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3537/relativehumidity.png
“Not satellite data. Just an example of people taking data randomly off the web that supports their preconceptions without bothering to ask even the most basic questions about it.”
Hmmm…the same could be said about you bud.
Bill Illis presented the above graph, and you have failed to refute it saying that because you have failed to refute it by just dismissing it altogether through the “Either/Or Fallacy” to wit:
“The radiosonde data is known to have severe problems and I’ve never even seen people try to look at the fluctuations with it.”
Hmm….seems like a few of them do:
http://radiometrics.com/vance04.pdf
“The possibility of temperature measurement errors producing errors in the relative humidities reported by the RD93 sondes has been investigated (A. K. Vance 2004, unpublished manuscript), and we conclude that although errors of up to 3% RH may exist from this source, which is a concern, THIS IS NOT SIGNIFICANT COMPARED TO THOSE LIKELY TO ARISE FROM ATMOSPHERIC VARIABLITY.”
But anyway, back to the original question, you have yet to refute the graph which Illis presented above.
Or are you just going to try to change the subject again?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Joel Shore (08:20:14)
Thats odd. The latest data, post 2007 shows stratospheric vapour on a downward trend, but increasing in th elower troposphere. These are not model simulations – as you refer to them – but data sets.
so what is happening? Climate sensitivity is greatly over estimated by models: far from water vapour giving a strong feedback in the troposhere, (cloud cover) autonomous cooling mechanisms occur, troposheric temperatures cool and less vapour goes into the stratosphere. However, it does prove that water vapour is the salient ghg overriding anything from other ghg’s .
The problem this is: How can c02 heat absorbtion cause the necessary heating of oceans to produce this vapour. There isn’t a scientifically valid mechanism for that. It can only be heat from the oceans via the solar connection that puts more vapour into the atmosphere, since the thermal coeffecient of c02 doesn’t affect the oceans

Correction:
“Bill Illis presented the above graph, and you have failed to refute it saying that because you have failed to refute it by just dismissing it altogether through the “Either/Or Fallacy” to wit:”
“The radiosonde data is known to have severe problems and I’ve never even seen people try to look at the fluctuations with it.”
MEANT TO SAY:
Bill Illis presented the above graph, and you have failed to refute it by just dismissing it altogether through the “Either/Or Fallacy” to wit:
“The radiosonde data is known to have severe problems and I’ve never even seen people try to look at the fluctuations with it.”

Joel, from the paper:
However, because the
mass of water vapor decreases rapidly with
height, the column integral is primarily weighted
by the lower troposphere, and its largely
thermodynamic behavior is unsurprising (21).
And their fig 1 shows that warmer sea surfaces cause more evaporation, something we already knew. We also knew we in a primarily positive PDO and expect warmer sea surface temperatures overall. The rest of the paper has no water vapor information, just temperature (figs 2 and 3). They assume their simulation can’t possibly be wrong and that running their sim with constant RH produces the same temperature results as measured (well it would with the same forcing), that means there must be constant RH which they devolve to “moistening trend” in the UT. They dismiss the actual measurements showing the UT is not moistening.

savethesharks says:

And see the following. Not only do radiosondes have a wide margin of error, BUT APPARENTLY SATTELLITES DO TOO:
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/5/1529/2005/acpd-5-1529-2005-print.pdf

Well, determining long-term trends in the satellite data is certainly not without its problems but it sounds like the radiosondes are considerably more problematic. Furthermore, Soden et al. used the satellite data not just to compare not just the long-term trends but also the shorter-term fluctuations (e.g., on the timescales of months to a few years). For these, the problems with stitching together different satellites or orbital decay or other issues that affect long-term trends won’t be an issue. So, I think the evidence that the water vapor feedback operates as expected over these timescales is quite robust. I suppose it is possible that it works over the shorter timescales but breaks down over the multidecadal timescales, but this seems rather unlikely since the processes involving water vapor operate on timescales of hours to days.

Oh. I mean by that, i’m interested in the part where they use data to support the notion that enhanced tropospheric water vapour has led to a multiplied increase in global warming, from 2002 to 2009, which is the context iin which you brought the paper to attention

Joel, did you look up reference 28 in the text you quoted above? He says “widely used” but provides one reference to an article with no title that he authored. I really would like to see more (any) legitimate references that HIRS can measure water vapor. Like I said, nothing can measure water vapor, but some satellites have multiple IR channels that they can subtract to get water vapor (basically subtract the non-absorbed IR from the absorbed IR). Then the authors in this article state:
Figure 2 compares the satellite-observed
equivalent blackbody temperatures from chan-
nel 12 (T12) from the HIRS instrument with
those computed from the model_s temperature
and moisture profiles (30). Under clear skies,
T12 is primarily sensitive to changes in relative
humidity averaged over a deep layer of the
upper troposphere (roughly 200 to 500 hPa)
(21). Thus, if the water vapor mass in the upper
troposphere increases by conserving relative
humidity as the atmosphere warms, only a
small perturbation to T12 would be expected.
They are assuming constant RH so they can compare the model temperature to the observed temperature. They are assuming the same hypothesis that they are trying to prove (constant RH aka UT moistening).

Joel Shore (08:20:14) :

I notice that “skeptics” demand that the predictions of AGW be perfect in order to believe them and yet totally ignore the the record that the “skeptics” themselves have on making such predictions. If one actually did a comparison, I think you would find that Hansen’s predictions have been head-and-shoulders above the “skeptics”!

Which skeptics are those? And which skeptics are using their predictions to try to force the world to make trillion dollar changes to the world economy?
My original point still stands. AGWers in 2007 were dislocating their shoulders doing high fives vicariously celebrating Hansen’s models and chortling how accurate they were. It’s a little funny to see you guys all now saying “Error bars! Error bars!”

Joel Shore (12:54:09) :
Thanks for your thoughts.
Seems to me using a blend of the best data available, satellite, radiosonde, and otherwise…is the best approach.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

P Wilson says:

Oh. I mean by that, i’m interested in the part where they use data to support the notion that enhanced tropospheric water vapour has led to a multiplied increase in global warming, from 2002 to 2009, which is the context iin which you brought the paper to attention

What they are looking at is how water vapor is changing in the atmosphere. Its radiative effects are well-understood (and, of course, also seen in the remote sensing by satellites). Not every paper in the field is going to deal with every aspect of the science.
Of course, if you continue to believe that the Steffan-Boltzmann Equation and God-knows-what-else isn’t correct, then it would be like my trying to talk to a Young Earth Creationist…and frankly such effort is not worth my time.

Joel Shore
The usual nonsense. Added to which I don’t think you’ve answered any propositions throughout this thread! At least none of the ones that I’ve posed. At best, its evasion, though this has been pointed out.
Scientists know that ghg’s don’t cause warming at the surface of the earth, so have contrived an absurd mechanism to say that its going on somewhere else. They now admit that water apour is the primary ghg, and so concoct a mechanism, equally absurd by which c02 causes it. As for the silliness of appplying the steffan-Bolzmann equation, for want of any better method of contriving the numbers, read above – P Wilson (14:34:00)
Since c02 can’t be inferred as causing the warming, it is being used to amplify another fraud – the water vapour multiplier effect.
so lets consider some of the factors. the wavelength of c02 obsorbtion is that of subzero temperatures, not of normal temperatures. ordinary outgoing radiation is in the 6-12 micron range, or else around 15C at average. None of this is interecepted by c02 as it doesn’t correspond to the c02 length of 13-16microns. On the other hand, radiation given off by the arctic can be captured by c02. This presents the problem of the thermal ability of c02 to cause water to evaporate from oceans.
Warmer air holds more water vapour, . Increasing the holding capacity is reducing the relative humidity, which would reduce precipitation; but global precipitation is increasing—the real reason being that oceans are heating, not the atmosphere. This is because air has a small heat capacity whilst oceans don’t – the implication being that any heat intercepted by c02 doesn’t affect oceans as It doesn’t have the thermal energy. It takes a large amount of energy to increase the temperature of water than it does air, so there is no mechanism by which air can increase the temperature of oceans.
Here the logic gets even more ridiculous. If c02 had this forcing efect on water vapour then all human effects would disappear, as natural amplifications take over, – yet vapourisation of oceans takes place well outside the parameters of c02
Even the most ridiculous stretching of logic cannot salvage this anthropogenic c02 thesis. Streching it to 30% of all c02 and maintaining that human c02 accumulates whilst natural c02 doesn’t is preposterous, as oceans regulate c02 levels, but maintaining that it amplifies by a high magnitude a water vapour feedback, since c02 doesn’t do much on its own is by far the greatest absurdity.
going higher up into the atmosphere because none of it is happening close to the surface though is the ultimate error. Upper tropospheric temperatures are -19 to -45C. It is impossible for these temperatures to keep the surface warmer than if ghg’s didn’t. Thats why they had to pull the Boltmann constant out of thin air to esoterically amplify the whole state of affairs by ten times in order to get the 1C on a c02 doubling

Joel said “However, since they have essentially two measurements (T_12 and T_2) and two unknowns (temperature and water vapor), they can verify the agreement of each independently.”
Nice thought, but they are not solving an equation. The two measurements are being made simply so they can separate out the UT from the full Troposphere, not to solve an equation. In any case they are dependent variables.
They run their model and compare the UT temperatures from the model and the T12-T2 measurement and conclude that there must be moistening since the model shows moistening. They are simply confirming that their model (with its embedded hypothesis) matches their hypothesis of reality.
But as I said above, there are other models that could easily match the T12-T2 measurements. For example the UT could be warm and dry (which in reality it is according to the radiosondes) with T12-T2 showing the difference that they ascribe to moistening. It is a temperature difference, not a measurement of anything but that.

Eric (skeptic):

Nice thought, but they are not solving an equation. The two measurements are being made simply so they can separate out the UT from the full Troposphere, not to solve an equation. In any case they are dependent variables.

No…Read what they write about the differencing:

Because the anomalies in T12 are a function of both moisture and temperature changes over this period, it is important to verify the credibility of the model-simulated temperature variations. For this purpose, the global mean tropospheric temperature anomalies observed from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) channel 2 radiances (T2) are compared with those simulated from the GCM (Fig. 2, middle panel). The MSU T2 radiances are primarily sensitive to the temperature averaged over a deep layer of the troposphere (roughly 200 to 800 hPa).

Eric (skeptic) says:

It is a temperature difference, not a measurement of anything but that.

I am confused. Do you understand that what satellite remote sensing does is look at the radiation received at certain wavelengths and express it as an effective radiating temperature? Are you saying that you don’t believe it possible to determine water vapor content at all using satellite remote sensing?